Re: Kickstarter was not successful... but it did help things...

[Gregory Casamento]

Doc,

I am not trying to refute your points, I’m trying to discuss them.  You seem 
very adamant on banging on how wrong we are without being willing to discuss 
your points rationally.

On Dec 23, 2013, at 2:43 PM, Doc O'Leary <droleary@7usenet2013.subsume.com> 
wrote:

> In article <mailman.10141.1387809424.10748.discuss-gnustep@gnu.org>,
> Gregory Casamento <greg.casamento@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> GNUstep hasn¹t boomed with Apple for various reasons:
> 
> What follows are post hoc justifications rather than real reasons.  The 
> actual reason remains that Apple communicates their message better than 
> GNUstep does.

I don’t know where the idea that they are post-hoc (i.e. looking at the data 
and making a determination after the fact) comes from.   These are reasons 
which have been told to me personally by users I’ve spoken to at conferences 
and such as to why they themselves didn’t adopt GNUstep.

I agreed with you so many times on the point that we don’t communicate our 
message effectively it’s not even funny.   Next point please.

>> 1) It has an outdated look
> 
> Nobody cares.  Or, rather, that isn't one of the primary things that 
> keeps people away.  What's the use case?  I mean, most open source GUIs 
> look "outdated" compared to commercial offerings.  What fundamental 
> issue *actually* keeps people from coding with GNUstep vs. some other 
> API?

This was actually the PRIMARY reason and the most common reason why I’m told 
people don’t want to use it.  To most people our GUI is just not attractive. 
Sorry for anyone that might piss off on the project, but it is true and it’s 
been repeated for years.

> 
>> 2) Most developers in Open Source don¹t like Objective-C.  They consider it 
>> UGLY.
> 
> Again, what's the actual use case for that?  Because, from where I'm 
> sitting, ObjC interest is bigger than ever.  Are you saying none of them 
> want to port their apps to Windows or Linux?  Or that every one of the 
> developers who wants to start learning ObjC wants to buy a Mac to do the 
> UGLY work?  I'm just not seeing your reasoning.

Again.  This is something developers have told me again and again.  They say 
that Objective-C has an “ugly syntax.”   Most developers, in my experience, 
would rather use GTK or Qt on the Mac and write applications simply because it 
uses C++.

>> 3) Many people assume GNUstep is an implementation of OpenStep only, mainly 
>> because of it¹s look and feel and they don¹t go beyond that point to try to 
>> discover more.
> 
> That's on GNUstep for failing to better communicate.

It’s stated right on our front page in plain English that we are an 
implementation of Cocoa.   It’s also something I’ve repeated again and again at 
conferences, on shows and on my blog.  If you can tell me a better way to tell 
people, please let me know.

> 
>> 4) GNUstep hasn¹t implemented iOS/CocoaTouch APIs.
> 
> That certainly hasn't helped for the last 5 years, but what about before 
> that?  What about *any* serious efforts to port Mac software?  Or ports 
> *to* the Mac of GNUstep software?

There are a number of apps which have been ported to Windows and Linux from the 
Mac.  Eggplant being one of them.  There are more on our “GNUstep successes” 
page on the wiki. 

http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Success_Stories 

>> 5) in the free software world people were too concentrated on beating Apple 
>> and Microsoft to even think about implementing an API which was defined by 
>> NeXT/Apple.
> 
> Immaterial.  There were ObjC/Cocoa developers and many have since then 
> taken an interest in the technology.  But they have not taken an 
> interest in GNUstep.  You need to seriously ask yourself why that is the 
> case.  My conclusion is that your code is sound, but your message needs 
> work.  In response, I'm essentially told to take my empty opinion and 
> piss off.  People get upset further when I point out that such a 
> response actually supports my point.  :-)

The most common response I get from people is that they didn’t know that 
GNUstep existed.  This goes to the point of our message.  

> 
>> With the collapse of GNOME due to GNOME3¹s failures, the above may change 
>> and 
>> now, indeed, might be the time for GNUstep to riseŠ but we shall see.
> 
> There's no real need to wait and see.  GNUstep will continue to flounder 
> so long as it fails to deliver a message that people want to hear.  That 
> *should* be the takeaway from the dismal crowd funding effort.  Somehow 
> I'm a jerk for pointing this out.

I agree that our message is unclear and that it needs updating.  

Also, Please don’t put words in my mouth, I never said you were a jerk for 
pointing it out.  I said you were being a jerk WHILE pointing it out, there’s a 
difference. :)

The “dismal” crowd funding effort failed because of two very basic reasons:

1) Set the goals too high and the timeframe too short
2) What I proposed was not really clear

These are the take aways that I learned from the criticism of that effort.  Any 
subsequent effort will be more carefully thought through.

Greg